Japanese company Aska has released the Mini Tripper. The Mini Tripper is a portable photo storage device with a 20 GB or 40 GB 1.8 inch hard drive. The Mini Tripper sports a Type II CF slot, a USB 2.0 interface and a lithium ion rechargeable battery. The dimensions of this little guy are just 3.5 in x 2 ¾ in x 1 ¼ in and 7 2/3 oz. Its built in monochrome LCD will show file transfer progress as well as hard drive structure information including folder management and CF status.

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During Sony’s annual retailer gathering Destination Playstation, Sega announced that the price of their video games for next generation consoles will most likely start at $59.99. They went on to speculate that EA Sports games could start at a bank-breaking $69.99. That’s roughly a $10-$30 price increase from the current pricing scheme. However, if the games are worth it, gamers are sure to cough up the dough – especially when NFL games are EA exclusive. We can probably expect to see something similar to the Platinum Hits category Xbox currently employs to help entice more game sales.

South Korean semiconductor manufacturer MagnaChip has developed an image sensor for the pill sized cameras doctors are beginning to use to photograph a patients entire intestinal track. The camera is swallowed and tracks its path through the intestine while taking up to 50,000 pictures. Thankfully for photo processors, these images are transferred to a hard drive worn as a belt while the pill makes its journey. The MagnaChip will help in early detection of diseases, such as cancer, during its eight-hour journey through the roller coaster of your bowels.

The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority is set to become the first North American subway system to integrate television and radio feeds into their transit system. Commuters will be able to check out looped news feeds from local affiliates along with three radio stations playing Top 40, R&B, and Jazz hits. Instead of piping the television audio through the on board sound system, riders will tune in to the television audio using an FM transmitter, similar to the radio feeds. MARTA plans to bring in $20 million based on their share of the advertising dollars over the next ten years.

As a former resident of Staten Island (or Shaolin for those in the know), I can vouch for the fact that New York City has a lot of garbage. After all, what would you expect from a city that has as many people as New York does? In an effort to deal with at least part of the problem, BigBelly trash cans are now being tested in downtown Manhattan. What is unique about these receptacles is that they are solar powered, allowing them to sense when the garbage is getting full. At that point, an internal trash compacter squeezes the contents so that is takes up as little space as possible. Very cool. Now if only New Yorkers would actually put their trash into the sidewalk trash cans, rather than on the ground.

If Q-Tips just haven’t been your thing, it just might be time for you to import yet another of those wacky gadgets from Japan. This one is basically a vacuum cleaner for your ear. It claims to suck the debris out of the ear efficiently, and without doing any damage to any essential (or non-essential for that matter) parts while in there, and is fast enough that it won’t tire out your hands - or as the translation says, “In the ear also being able to hurt, clear without either making the hand become tired the cleanliness!” Yeah!

TotalVideoGames has some photos of what might be the next Mario game from Nintendo. No word yet if Nintendo plans to launch the next Mario game for its next generation gaming system, code named Revolution, or if it will grace the Gamecube instead. The have a few more images up at their site, all of which are fuzzy and dim - two indicators that this is probably someone trying to put one over on us.

GameSeek will be offering a keyboard attachment for the PSP that doubles as a screen protector. There’s not much information or even a feature list on the website, but by the picture you can see it’s a small fold-away keyboard. I don’t know if I would want to use my PSP as a word processor per se, but this attachment would be handy when surfing the web or jotting down some quick notes. Get your hands on one on May 27th for £19.99.

What you see above are images I took using the NASA World Wind mapping software. If you have never used it before, you have to check it out. It uses satellites to show you images of anywhere in the world - and it blows Google Keyhole out of the water. Using buttons in the menu, you can change the view to show actual imagery (see top image), or a traditional topo map (see bottom image). The two images above are actually different views of the same thing - that being The Museum of Natural History right next to Central Park. The screenshots were also taken using the software’s built in capture feature. Click on the above images for more detailed shots. It is well worth the 180 MB download.
Read More | NASA World Wind (Download here) via C: Pirillo